Narsaq

Yesterday, after I came back from seeing Erik the Red, I went through the arboretum to Signal Hill, to see the glacier above the town. I also saw the ice cap above the other side of the fjord, and an impressive waterfall.

Today I took the boat to Narsaq, one of the major towns in south Greenland. Unfortunately it was snowing, and had been snowing all morning. There was a Danish group at the hotel, who were due to fly out, but weren't going anywhere. They were envious that I was. There was one other passenger on the boat - a municipal official who had caught the boat to go to Denmark for a meeting that morning. We were expecting others, but they obviously hadn't arrived.

I had a very interesting conversation with him, while it snowed all the way to Narsaq. The area has a rare earth mine, and its power is from a hydroelectric plant eight kilometres away across the fjord. We passed a number of isolated sheep farms between the cliffs. On our way, we overtook the boat with the sheep on it, bound for the slaughterhouse in Narsaq

There are Viking ruins here, as well. The farm is the earliest set of Viking ruins in Greenland, so they give a good idea about what the original settlers built. They haven't been extensively excavated, and part of the farm has disappeared as the coastline has eroded.

I also went to the museum which was open and has a very good collection of both Inuit and Viking objects, as well as the history of the town.

In case you couldn't see the ice on the fjord yesterday, I took another picture of ice on today's fjord.